TO: Brian Hayes, former editor and current writer for American Scientist
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: Homepages(s): Blog, Institute for Applied Computational Science (Harvard), writings, particularly The Science of Sticky Spheres (Brian Hayes, American Scientist, 2012) and First Links in the Markov Chain, American Scientist, V. 101, 2013 (Harvard Gazette article) Simons Institute, Y Combinator Research, and Wikipedia
This page: https://81018.com/hayes/
Second email: 15 March 2026
Dear Brian,
Our page about your work is not easy to find among all the pages on our site, but people do find it! It’s been on the daily reports for the last three months. We’ve come a long way since that first note (below). We have the big eight AI machines doing the equivalent of peer-review. For somebody of my caliber, it is impossible to get that far in the process. We now have the eight leading AIs paying attention. Fascinating.
Most sincerely,
Bruce
First email: December 12, 2023 at 9 PM (updated)
Dear Brian,
Your article, The Science of Sticky Spheres (American Scientist, 2012) recently came to my attention. Back in 2012, I had conceded a long-standing debate with Prof. Dr. Phil Davis of Brown (and NIST) around the question about which is more fundamental, “Circles-spheres or equilateral triangles-tetrahedrons.” It all seems so very long ago. I had barely scratched the surface of the study of fundamental things, including equations. Long-long ago in 1970, I had been part of Arthur Loeb’s Philomorphs; Bucky Fuller would occasionally visit and push us all. Thirty years later, John Conway and I would spend a day mostly around his Fine Hall office talking about the interior structure of the tetrahedron and octahedron. And, just recently I chatted with his collaborator, Salvatore Torquato, about how scholarship had overlooked the octahedral gap that readily sits on top of Aristotle’s missed tetrahedral gap and how the new object is quite striking. So little has been done with gap geometries, especially their possible relation to quantum theory. I’ll begin making references to your sticky spheres starting with this page: https://81018.com/spin/
With your work in 2012, you’ve opened up new doors and taken us one step further and closer to an integrated, highly-mathematical and geometrical view of the universe. Thank you! And, congratulations. on all your wonderful work.
May I hope for a sequel?
Warmly,
Bruce
____
Also see: Sphere Packing Solved in Higher Dimensions